Digital coin pics 3 of 3 – white balance

Blade

This is something I knew virtually nothing about until I started taking coin pics. White balance is a feature in the camera that lets you compensate for various lighting conditions. I use the camera with most of the Auto settings. I knew there was a white balance option but I didn’t pay attention to how it worked or overriding the auto settings.

When left to it’s own devices, the camera tries to guess the light type and selects the correct white balance. Here is what it compensates for (from the Kodak manual):

Tungsten – Corrects for orange cast of household light bulbs
Flourescent – Corrects for green case of fluorescent lights
(And a whole bunch of others for indoor and outdoor lighting.)

So I noticed that some of my coins had a different look on the obverse and reverse pics. The reason is when I moved the light to bring out the luster, the camera adjusted for a different white balance.

Check out the differences between the $10 obverse and reverse. In reality, they are identical in color.



$10 MS63 Obv High Res



$10 MS63 Rev High Res

Also here is a Jeff nickel where I first did a regular shot of the reverse, then a close-up to zoom in on the Full Steps:



5c MS66FS Rev High Res



5c MS66FS Closer High Res

To get the most realistic & consistent pics, use manual override for white balance and keep it static for coin pics of a similar metal/grade.

As a final note, I have read threads that flame online pics because the slab label looks white even though it should be light blue. This may not be an intentional effort on the seller to use hyper-lighting on the coin to make it look better. In my case many of my light blue slab labels came out white due to the camera’s white balance compensation. Yet the coin picture looks extremely representative:



Blue slab label looks white - High Res

Whew!!!! I hope all of this has been helpful for some of you out there. Let me know if I can provide any further insight into your digital picture adventures.

Mark

Tom:

Your pictures are helpful, interesting, and a warning about believing every picture you see on the Internet. I thought the difference between your $10 gold piece's obverse and reverse was remarkable. And your comment about the "washed out" PCGS will cause me to re-evaluate how I judge similar pictures.

Thanks.

Mark

Cam40

Thats a very important yet often forgotten issue with digital cameras.We used to hold up a white sheet of paper with a bright light on it to calibrate the white balance before video recording of the subject began.
Video 101.

Cam40

Also,Thanks for reminding me.I need to reshoot all my coins.

Blade

Mark,
Glad to help. It was my goal to help inform - glad that I could.

IrishMike

Nice series Tom and well done. I use that same lamp, makes a big difference.

Russ

Bump.

Russ, NCNE

MrKelso

Again an Excellent series of posts. Thank you

Blade

TTT one last time for those who weren't on last night.

TONEDDOLLARS

Thanks for the info on the label and lighting. I have posted pictures of some toned Morgans and there is always one person who comments about the tweaked photos. I have never tweaked or used any software to enhance the photos.. I always maintained that it was to much lighting from me trying to relect natural daylight off a cutting board covered with aluminum foil. Still, some will not take you at your word. There loss not mine.

prooflike

ttt.

These things get buried pretty quick!

cjmbuffalo

Not only does the white balance have impact on color reproduction so does the light metering. Most digital cameras have a min of 2 settings on how they measure the light intensity. I would recommend that the camera meter be set to "spot" as this will read the light value in the center of the object being photograped. One other point, light metering values are calculated from the norm of a 18% grey card, not white as in video production.Thats why when photgraphing white objects they tend to be a little grey.Normally most spot meter readings only cover the 2% of the center of the picture. Another point some digital cameras will alllow you to increase the contrast of the image as you take the picture, this will also enhance the color reproduction.

Blade

TTT - for the newbies

braddick

I love learning this stuff! Keep it coming. . .